It's about time we do away with this antiquated and useless form of American currency, and start rounding up our change like real men (and women). Think about these facts next time you're at the counter scrounging for three cents just so that you don't get 97 in change.

Posted on
August 30, 2011, 22:53 GMT

This is a personal, non-sponsored post by a member of BuzzFeed's ad content team.

Okay, so most of that headline was to really draw your attention in, but many young children a year do swallow them and get poisoned by clad-zinc, risking death. So think about that one every time you just casually toss a penny aside.

You know when you go to McDonald's and you spot one of those "Ronald McDonald Foundation" donation boxes and suddenly feel the urge to drop some cents in there? Well, if pennies didn't exist, you would automatically feel even more charitable.

5.We could collect all the remaining pennies and help solve the debt crisis.

This coincides with the first point--that they're useless--but pennies cost the US Treasury 1.79 cents each to manufacture, so why not just collect them all, melt them down, and sell the copper and zinc to fight the deficit?

Think about how many minutes a day (or hours a year) you lose waiting for math-deficient people to count out their pennies to make exact change in line. Not only is it annoying, but time is literally money here.

Let's face it--Americans are lazy. If you accidentally drop a penny, you're probably just going to leave it there. I bet you would pick up a nickel, though. Think about all the animals that might be choking on those millions of useless pennies lying around on the street and out in the forest. Yeah.

The Mint makes 20.27 million pennies a day (7.4 billion annually). Eliminating them would mean only half the work would be required, and all those workers would have some much-deserved time off. Combined with not having to wait so long in line for people to count their pennies, that's gotta be like an extra week a year.

If Abe were being honest today, he would look at all these previous facts, and--being a modest dude--sacrifice his own likeness on billions of pennies so that we could all live happier, easier lives. After all, who wouldn't take a fiver over one measly cent?